~ Erotic Art in all its beauty

Leonard Burtman, the hand and lens behind this classic American “”digest of the unusual and bizarre””, was Forced to make a drastic career switch after witnessing the desert A-Bomb tests of the Fifties while working as a government scientist. Turning his back on the horrors of the twentieth century, he devoted the rest of his life to images of sexual Fantasy, which in their own way have shaped the male collective consciousness just as powerfully as the nuclear missile. His conversion coincided in with the growing liberation of US cities as they rebelled against Eisenhower to embrace a night-life of decadence, sensuality, and physical abandon. “”Exotique”” presented the pin-up as a Femme Fatale, publishing shot after shot of the dominatrix adorned with tight corset, razor heels, complex underwear and an expression on her Face that demanded obedience. Enthusiastically casting from a roster of willing models (including the legendary Betty Page) as well as call-girls and dancers, Burtman experimented with bondage scenarios and group poses, and as a bonus hired in the maestros of the illustrative arts like Eric Stanton to bring his pneumatic ideal to life even more extravagantly. This colossal collection contains all this and more.

The April, 1938 issue of “Snappy”, a girlie/erotica pulp of the classic era. Cover is unsigned, but is either Earl Bergey, Georges Quintana or Enoch Bolles, most likely Bergey. A scarce but classic girlie/pin-up mag of the golden age for that, with a fetching cover by one of the major luminaries in that genre art – Earle Bergey, Enoch Bolles and George Quintana, who for magazines defined the field at that time and for decades to come. Contents include male-oriented soft-erotica stories, usually illustrated (sometimes in a nice art deco mode) with one- or two-line-drawings involving semi-nudity and other pertinent stylizations celebrating female magnetism as it was then. Still is, in fact. Internal illustrations are here completely uncredited, and the writers’ names are certainly pseudonymous. But that’s part of the fun

Renowned pin-up artist Bill Ward gets the full coffee table treatment in a lavish, oversized, full-color collection of his most polished 1950s illustrations. Imagine, if you will, an innocent but stunning young woman boasting the most unlikely Barbie-like proportions—and then some—poured into a wisp of lingerie or clingy cocktail dress, silky opera-length gloves, and sheer thigh-high stockings, perched precariously but not inelegantly atop a pair of dangerously high stiletto heels, and you’ve got the recipe for the quintessential Wardian glamour girl. Ward’s girls became staples of countless men’s and humor magazines where he shared the pages with cult models like Bettie Page and fellow “good girl” artists such as Dan DeCarlo and Jack Cole. Ward became the standard bearer and justly famous through the ’50s and ’60s for his angular, high-sheen images of improbably busty glamour girls, a kind of low-rent Charles Dana Gibson. What set Ward apart—and above—his talented contemporaries was his use of a medium called the conte crayon. When drawn on a simple newsprint stock, this potent combination created a charcoal-like effect and color that gave Ward’s original art an elegant sepia-tone quality. This volume features the best of Ward’s Humorama work, including a selection of Ward’s infamous telephone girls. Tame by today’s standards, Ward’s telephone girls were considered provocative at the time, caught as they were in various states of dress or, more often, undress.

The majority of the images in this volume were drawn between 1956 and 1963 when Ward was at the height of his skill, shot from original art and printed in full color. This book not only reproduces over a hundred beautifully rendered illustrations, but captures a more innocent moment in American pop culture. 72 pages color.

You can trace a thematic line between the work of comic-book artist Eric Stanton and his fellow American image-maker Russ Meyer. Both began producing their art in the aftermath of World War Two, both were obsessed with a similar parodic vision of the female. Tall, absurdly buxom, with long legs, a slim waist, long hair, and an expression of insane desire imprinted on her beautiful face, as with Meyer, Stanton’s depiction of woman was beyond reality. They were amazon descendants, femme fatales, mistresses of the whip or the handcuffs; simultaneously a parody and a sincere celebration of empowered sexuality. The men in his fast-moving narratives are often striving to escape but they are always immobilised, restrained literally by ropes, or simply frozen in their awe at the sight of Stanton’s superheroines. So prolific was the artist that his collected oeuvre, all the covers, illustrations (for magazines such as Exotique) and comic books, could now fill several libraries, but one should really stumble upon Stanton by chance. At midnight in a cheap hotel room, you might come across this edition lurking under the mattress with a girl’s name and a phone number scrawled inside. You probably won’t even need to phone that number.

Eric Stanton (1926-1999) has been called “the Rembrandt of Pulp-Culture” and it’s not hard to see why—he is perhaps the brightest star of his genre. His imaginative, detailed full-color comic strip narratives picture buxom, leggy femmes fatales having their way with tied-up, handcuffed, or simply awestruck men. Stanton’s imagery is either an empowerment of female sexuality or a caricature of female-domination fantasy—depending on whom you ask—but there is no doubt that in Stanton’s world, women rule the land.

This retrospective volume covers Stanton’s work from the late 1940s until the 1990s, including over 500 comic strips, single illustrations, and magazine covers. Also featured is an in-depth introductory text exploring Stanton’s life and work by photographer Eric Kroll.

Peter Driben (1903 – 1975), an American pin-up artist, was perhaps one of the most productive pin-up artists of the 1940s and 1950s. Although both Alberto Vargas and Gil Elvgren have extensive catalogues of work, neither came close to the output of Driben. Driben’s pinups delighted the American public from the beginning of World War II until the great baby boom of the 1950s.